Perpetual regains its worldly balance

Perpetual Investments has restructured its balanced fund, giving it more of a global orientation in line with its strengthened relationship with Fidelity In-ternational.

Now rebranded as the Fidelity Perpetual Balanced Growth Fund, the fund's inter-national allocation has been increased from 15 per cent to 25 per cent.

At the same time, the benchmark for property securities has been reduced from 10 per cent to 5 per cent and for Australian shares from 45 per cent to 40 per cent.

Chief executi

Perpetual Investments has restructured its balanced fund, giving it more of a global orientation in line with its strengthened relationship with Fidelity In-ternational.

Now rebranded as the Fidelity Perpetual Balanced Growth Fund, the fund's inter-national allocation has been increased from 15 per cent to 25 per cent.

At the same time, the benchmark for property securities has been reduced from 10 per cent to 5 per cent and for Australian shares from 45 per cent to 40 per cent.

Chief executive Rodney Green says the changes reflect Perpetual's philosophy of making best use of its recognised strengths.

"Equities is recognised as the asset class that provides the greatest opportu-nity to outperform benchmarks and we now have a better balance between Austra-lian and international equities in the fund," he says.

"Our investment approach reflects our belief that equities drives the perform-ance of balanced funds and, together with Fidelity internationally, we actively manage the equities assets.

"Property securities, cash, and bonds are managed in line with their relevant index as our view is that these classes offer little opportunity for outperfor-mance.

"We therefore concentrate on adding value where value counts and allocate

resources where our skills are."

Fidelity adopts a similar investment approach to Perpetual's value-based style in the international market.

Fidelity executive director Chrissy Keen says her group is an active bottom-up stock picker. It focuses on fundamental company research and believes that stock selection provides it with the greatest scope to add value.

Fidelity's 167 analysts around the world follow 6,450 companies and cover 90 per cent of the stocks in each market.

Green adds that the restructuring of its fund gives Perpetual a better fit across the range of its funds.

"We now have a clearer position for the risk/return profile of our balanced fund within the total range of the funds we offer, so that its asset allocation and overall balance provides investors with a better defined choice between the Fi-delity Perpetual Balanced Growth Fund, our more aggressive Fidelity Perpetual Split Growth Fund, and the Perpetual Conservative Growth Fund," he says.

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